11 New York City Homes Listed for Water Cutoff

By ANTHONY DePALMA

Published: August 8, 2007

After spending much of the last year trying to fix its outdated and unreliable water billing system, New York City is finally getting tough on delinquent ratepayers -- but only on 11 of them.

The city's Department of Environmental Protection, which runs the largest municipal water system in the country, yesterday issued notices to 11 single-family homeowners around the city warning them that they have 30 days to bring their water bills up to date or their taps will run dry.

That might not seem like much of a threat, considering there are tens of thousands of water deadbeats who owe the city about $600 million. An examination of the city's water records by The New York Times last year showed that some owners who had not paid their water bills for more than a decade individually owed the city hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But those owners or their properties were not included on the city's first shutoff list yesterday. Instead, the 11 unidentified homeowners have been in arrears for no more than 18 months, and they owe a total of just $53,000.

Nonetheless, the service termination notices represent a big step for New York. Unlike other major cities around the nation, New York has not routinely used service terminations to force customers to pay their bills, although it has had the legal authority to do so since 1999.

Occasionally, New York threatens to turn off the water to delinquent commercial customers. It also tries to compel large apartment buildings to pay their overdue bills by putting them into lien sales, but only if their property taxes are also in arrears.

But the possibility that some handicapped widow in Brooklyn might be left without water made service termination such a politically volatile issue that no administration was willing to risk cutting off the wrong house.

That changed as the overdue bill piled up into the hundreds of millions. And a critical evaluation by the national accounting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, expected to be released next month, urged the city's environmental department to do what it has never done before and issue service cutoff notices.

First, however, the department minimized the chances of being embarrassed.

Emily Lloyd, the department's commissioner, said that accounts more than two years in arrears were excluded because their murky histories complicated enforcement. Instead, the city went after homeowners who were 6 to 18 months behind on binding agreements they had signed to pay off delinquent bills.

Officials further culled the list of any owners who were considered elderly or disabled.

''We ended up with quite a small group,'' Ms. Lloyd said.

Although the department had previously considered taking enforcement action against only wealthy residents in wealthy neighborhoods, Ms. Lloyd said the department did not check incomes before putting homeowners on notice. She said the 11 single-family homes are located throughout the five boroughs.

After mailing the cutoff notices yesterday, the city will post advisories on the 11 houses today. Then, if the owners do not respond within 15 days, crews will be sent to mark water lines and prepare for shutting off the service from the street to the house.

In Chicago, Boston and other cities, most delinquent customers pay before water is turned off. New York officials believe the same thing will happen here.

''Our hope, of course, is that they will pay the bill,'' Ms. Lloyd said. ''But we want to be prepared to follow through on the entire process in case they don't.''

Ms. Lloyd said that by starting small, the city would have the chance to ensure that the termination process worked as intended. She said no notices would be issued during the heating season, which runs from Oct. 1 to April 15.

But next spring, the city intends to get tough again, perhaps this time on a larger scale.

''It's hard to imagine any way to be effective in collections without service terminations,'' Ms. Lloyd said.